Bio

Peter Rutkoff is an award-winning teacher and writer. He chairs the American Studies program, which he founded at Kenyon College in Gambier Ohio.

At Kenyon he has been the NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor from 1997 to 2000 and then the Robert Oden Professor of American Studies between 2004 and 2009.

As the co-founder of the Crossroads seminar, Rutkoff specializes in Africa-American studies and directs several projects, which work in close collaboration with secondary teachers across Ohio.

Rutkoff is the co-author, with Will Scott, of three books, New School, New York Modern: The Arts and the City, and Fly Away: The Great African American Migrations to be published in the spring of 2010 by Johns Hopkins University Press. He has also written several works of fiction including the novel Shadow Ball: A Novel of Baseball and Chicago, and a collection of short stories, Cooperstown Chronicles.

Rutkoff co-directs several Teaching American History Projects, was awarded Fulbright Fellowships to Paris in 1968, to Cyprus in 2005, and was the recipient of Kenyon's Trustee Teaching Excellence Award in 2004.

A native of New York City, educated at St. Lawrence University and the University of Pennsylvania, Rutkoff has resided in Gambier Ohio since 1971.